said by MikegotOOL :

Next they'll try to patent e-toilet paper.

said by MikegotOOL :

Next they'll try to patent e-toilet paper.

said by MS is piracy:

BurstNet.
Opera Software.
Novell.

Need I go on?

said by marketex :

Bill Gates is, perhaps, a genius at playing poker, requiring huge skills at bluffing. He did not think up the idea of emoticons any more than he thought up Drivespace or the browser or Disk Operating System (the original DOS) or the GUI or Java, each of which he attempted to appropriate as his own. Can you spell T-H-I-E-F?

said by john Qwest :

I recall that this is one that will fall due to "prior art", as I believe they have been use since T.T.Y.

said by richk_1957 :

And now @#$%^&* Microsoft wants to copyright them???

said by richk_1957 :

wrong

I did read the patent

They are patenting either using character sequences, such as a colon [:] and a right bracket [)] as a smiley face, or to have the same sequence replaced by a image, such as on the receiver of the text.

And yes, you are right, I did use the word copyright, instead of patent. That is my mistake

said by Seandhi :

They are patenting a way to transfer custom emoticons to another user through IM. Right now, one must have the same database of emoticons to be displayed the same on both machines. This will allow a user to create a custom emoticon, and have it displayed as intended on the other machine despite disparities in the databases.

said by Seandhi :

They are patenting a way to transfer custom emoticons to another user through IM. Right now, one must have the same database of emoticons to be displayed the same on both machines. This will allow a user to create a custom emoticon, and have it displayed as intended on the other machine despite disparities in the databases.

Microsoft wants to set itself as the central database for this, so you will not have to worry about anything local.

said by Goober :

You need to install a TIFF viewer. Only a couple of different ones work.

Here's the link:

»www.uspto.gov/patft/help/images.htm

said by Goober :

»www.alternatiff.com/

If you go there, they say they have a plugin that works with FF.

said by XknightHawkX :

Now if I am reading this right they just said that emoticons are popular and they want to patent the ideal of emoticons. I better tell everyone I did not read the whole application so no need to flame what I said here.

said by dave :

You're not even close.

There isn't a single claim in the text you quoted. It's simply background for describing the problem (which is why it's in a section headed 'background').

You should have read the 'abstract', which is a single paragraph saying what is being claimed.

said by gukid :

As stated in the "background" of the patent:
"Emoticons have acquired immense popularity and hence importance in new email, chatroom, instant messaging, and even operating system applications."

Doesn't that in itself state prior invention? That they are trying to patent something that has "aquired immense popularity"? This may honestly be the last straw microsoft...